


Son of a Witch

by suluism



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, M/M, Witchcraft
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-19
Packaged: 2018-08-07 15:06:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7719502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suluism/pseuds/suluism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Baekhyun, the witch’s magic-less son, meets a boy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. (I)

After 18 years of people holding their breath for the slightest hint of magic, followed by 4 years of silent resignation, Baekhyun was used to disappointing people. He’d been disappointing them ever since he was a baby when, as the story goes, he was birthed without so much as a lightbulb popping or a warm breeze whispering through the windowless room. “Your mother made sparks burst from my belly before she was even born!” Baekhyun’s grandmother would remind him Every Time She Visited. “We always knew she was meant for great things. You…well…” and this is where his grandmother’s face would sag with a half-smile-half-grimace. “You’ll be a great addition to the shop.”

And so Baekhyun was left to mind his mother’s shop while she was off adventuring the world, which was almost always. Sometimes she would send Baekhyun a postcard, this latest one from the Enchanted Wastes, depicting her endless smile as she wrapped her arm around a (friendly, she assured in the caption) banshee. Baekhyun clipped it to the top of the Wall of Witch, a place for customers to brag about their worldliness amongst themselves, and then continued unpacking the latest stock of pressed witch hazel. He stuffed the flowers into old spaghetti sauce jars while customers tittered over his mother’s latest rumored adventures.

“Last I heard, she created a landslide just to stop a car from hitting a duck pond!” _Wrong. She’d sooner eat a duck than save one._

“Didn’t she break a centuries-old curse on that haunted mansion over in England?” _Actually, she stumbled into the cursed vase when she was busy sending me pictures of an ugly tapestry._

“The paper swore she befriended a banshee! Over in the Wastes!” _Well. Third time’s the charm._

Baekhyun shook his head, setting the witch hazel jar down upon the shelf with enough force to make it rattle. (Granted, it didn’t take much to make anything in this store rattle. Baekhyun’s mother had bought the store off of an elderly warlock who had inherited it from his father who’d inherited it from his father before him and on and on until Merlin’s time. Baekhyun suspected that half the reason his mother returned every few months for a day or two was to reinforce the magic keeping the building from falling apart).

(And to see him.)

(Of course.)

“Do you ladies need any help?” Baekhyun asked, looking over to the witches crowded around his mother’s photo. One was adding her own just below it, though it was a decidedly less impressive image of her pretending to squish the Great Pyramid of Giza between her fingers.

“Oh, what a lovely young man! We’re almost done here, I’d say. Unless you happen to have some powdered unicorn liver?” The youngest witch smiled, though it was hard to tell a witch’s age even for someone magical. And judging by the unicorn liver she was interested in, she didn’t look young without a bit of magical effort.

Baekhyun held his tongue and crouched down to unlock the cabinet behind him with the kind of ancient key you’d expect to see in a fantasy film. His mother had brought them back from some vacation or another, promising that it could withstand the strongest spells and only respond to his touch. Baekhyun swore it shone red with some nasty-looking runes when he first touched it, but after decades of receiving his mother’s strange gifts without explanation of origin he learned not to ask.

“It’s a bit expensive lately – there’s been a sickness going around the forests up north,” Baekhyun explained as he lifted the coffee tin filled with shimmering red dust onto the countertop. “For you it’ll be….” He paused. Looked the woman up and down. Squinted. “The first time you fell from your backyard tree.”

The witch grimaced but held out her arm.

(Any decent witch knew that the bad memories were just as valuable as the good.)

Baekhyun clipped a bracelet around her wrist. The gold chain, so thin it glimmered like gossamer in the low light, was weaved through a small locket. Were his mother here, she could pull the memory straight from the witch’s mind and drop it in one of the jars lining the shelves in the back room. As it was, Baekhyun would have to collect the memory in the locket and later transfer it to a jar with Jongdae’s help.

Baekhyun began to scoop the dust carefully into a silken pouch, but he looked up when he heard the witch sigh. She closed her eyes, reliving the incident, and a few moments later the locket glowed softly with her silver memories. She set it onto the countertop, clearly sad to part with it, but smiled as Baekhyun handed her the powdered unicorn liver. “Thank you for your purchase. Have a nice day.”

The witch smiled and left with her friends as Baekhyun returned the tin to the cabinet. The bell above the door tinkled to announce their departure, and he sagged almost immediately. Being around magical folk was exhausting, in that sometimes the force of stronger magical folk would feel like the air itself was pressing down upon Baekhyun in all directions. Any other magic-less being wouldn’t notice, but Baekhyun had been taught to recognize magical powers. “It’ll be a useful skill for you, when you run the shop,” his mother had assured him, running her fingers through his hair and transforming teacups into butterflies to tickle his nose.

(He would always try to catch them with his chubby child fists, only for them to shimmer into nothingness at the touch of his finger.)

Most of Baekhyun’s life had been spent preparing to run his mother’s shop, once they learned that he didn’t have an ounce of magic in his veins and thus wouldn’t be able to accompany his mother on her adventures. She stuck around through his childhood, converting the shop from a storage space into a business, and building its reputation while teaching Baekhyun the ropes. The moment he hit adulthood, his mother returned to her life of travel and excitement while Baekhyun was left to watch the dust motes swirling in the shop’s low light.

The day was creeping past noon, which Baekhyun only knew because the striped sun moving past the “NOON” chalk mark on the floor near the shop counter. (Baekhyun’s mother was firm believer in a life lived without time pieces. “You have to live in the moment, darling,” she would say before flouncing out the door and inevitably winding up late to wherever she was meant to be.)

(Personally, Baekhyun was a big fan of digital clocks.)

Baekhyun was just about to grab his lunch from the back when the bell over the door chimed through the still air. Standing in the doorway was a gangly man with red hair, limbs hanging limply at his sides. It was clearly his first visit – Baekhyun never forgot a name or a face. And even if he did, this man was staring at the dragon skull above the window like he’d never seen one before.

“Do you need something?” The man’s head jerked up as if he hadn’t seen Baekhyun when he entered. He shook his head mutely and started to shuffle around the shop, pausing to stare at some trinkets and squinting to read Baekhyun’s lolling scrawl across jar labels.

He shuffled around for a little longer, and Baekhyun decided to take the direct approach (not at all because he was becoming irritable about his interrupted lunch break). He circled past the counter and headed straight towards the man, clearing his throat when he was too busy staring at the jar of toad eyes to notice him.

“S-sorry?” The man stuttered.

“I’m extremely well-versed in our inventory. Whatever you’re looking for, I can find for you. Browsing will get you nowhere.” At the man’s confused look, Baekhyun sighed and elaborated, “Literally. There’s a space spell on this place.” More confused looks. “As in…it’s all bigger than it appears? Everything is piled on top of everything. It would take you months to browse through our entire stock.”

The man paused. Looked down at the frog eyes. Looked back at Baekhyun.

“Are those actually frog eyes?”

Baekhyun’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of place do you think this is?”

“What….what kind of place do _you_ think this is?” The man replied, tugging at his shirt now as his eyes twitched from one jar to the next.

“I _think_ it’s the most reputable magical supplies store this side of the globe. So I _think_ I’ve labelled everything properly.”

Baekhyun was about ready to push the man straight out the door, regardless of his relative height and weight, when the man whimpered something quietly: “M-magical?”

It didn’t take much effort to put two and two together.

“Oh…pants.”


	2. (II)

Baekhyun was aware of the existence of latents – people who were unaware of their own powers, sometimes going their whole lives without interacting with the magical community. Typically, they would be born to non-magical families and somehow express the magical gene during puberty. Some would ignore the strange occurrences that only they could see, the whispering shadows following them around corners and the barest twinkle in the corner of their eye. Others, most, would eventually hunt down an answer in the form of (at best) another kindly magic folk or (at worst) a creature eager for their flesh.

This man, apparently, was one of the lucky ones.

“You’re lucky you found me instead of something else,” Baekhyun mused as he sat Chanyeol down behind the counter, handing him a steaming mug made of some kind of powder that someone (his mother? Jongdae? Junmyeon?) had left in the drink cabinet. He really had no experience comforting shocked people, considering his rather isolated upbringing, but in movies warm drinks always did the trick.

“Something....else?”

“Oh, you know,” Baekhyun sighed, “ghouls…demons…creatures of the night. The kinds of things that trick innocent wizards like yourself into jumping into ovens.”

The man took a sip of his drink, grimacing at the taste. (He didn’t die, though, so Baekhyun considered it a success.)

“I’m Baekhyun, by the way,” he introduced. “I basically run this place.”

“Chanyeol,” the man replied quietly, setting his mug down on the counter. “I’m not even sure how I got here?”

“There’s wards on this shop, just like every other magical space that connects to the human world. Only magical folk and those with permission can enter.” Baekhyun patted Chanyeol’s arm in a mechanical attempt at comfort. “If it makes you feel any better, now there’s a whole world for you to explore. Think of it like a reflection of the human world. Plus more eyes. And ghosts.”

This didn’t seem to comfort Chanyeol, who was starting to look like a leaf that had fallen from its branch and was beginning to dry into a curled corpse of its former self. Clearly Chanyeol needed to be steered gently.

(Baekhyun remembered when he’d found a caterpillar on a leaf outside his house when he was a child. It was soft and squishy and green and squirmed like it was dancing on Baekhyun’s hand. Baekhyun had run inside to show his mother his discovery, and she’d given him a pat on the head as she said, “Just what I was looking for!”)

(She then promptly dropped it the potion she was brewing.)

(Baekhyun hadn’t been particularly good at being ‘gentle’ with people ever since.)

“So, what do you do? You in college or something?” Baekhyun propped his chin up on his fists in an effort to look interested. When most of your time was spent split between manning a store (alone) and taking care of offsite shipments (also alone), you didn’t develop particularly enviable social skills.

“Uh…yeah. Yeah. I’m a music major,” he stuttered.

“Right,” Baekhyun sighed. This guy really didn’t know a thing. “Well, a lot of wizards choose to use music as their main medium. Writing spells into their lyrics, animating instruments, that sort of thing.”

Chanyeol’s breath seemed to be coming faster and faster. Baekhyun wasn’t exactly an expert with people, but he knew what distress looked like. He reached out to pat Chanyeol’s hand, intending to give him a gentle, comforting whack. Instead, Chanyeol’s fingers twined around his with an iron grip, as if hanging on for his life.

“Is there some kind of wizard school I can go to?” His voice shook. Otherwise, Baekhyun would’ve laughed and accused him of watching too many movies.

“Not for people your age, my friend,” Baekhyun replied, subtly trying to wrench his fingers away now. “There aren’t that many wizards and witches around anyways, and they’re all scattered across the globe. It’s more of a master and apprentice system.”

“Then…could you be my master?” Chanyeol’s eyes were so wide as to look almost buggy.

Baekhyun didn’t know a thing about what it took to be a master.

(And Chanyeol was still squishing his fingers.)

But he did know one thing: a master had to have at least a drop of magic in their sad meat sacks. And Baekhyun was sorely lacking.

“Actually, I–”

Chanyeol cut in, “Please! I’ll pay you!”

Now, Baekhyun was by no means motivated by regular money. The magical world operated on the intangible for the exchange of goods and services – ideas, memories, and the like. Even as a magic-less witch’s son, if he knew the terms of the agreement he could pay just as other witches did. Most who did business with him didn’t even realize he was magic-less – they just figured he liked to take his time.

The problem was that without magic, it was pretty hard to survive in the magical world for everything else. He had trouble entering magic-only spaces with security higher than the presence of magical blood.

(Which was a lot of them.)

(Plus, he wanted an iPhone.)

“If I must…I guess I can help you out,” Baekhyun sighed. Chanyeol shot him a relieved grin, and for a moment he _almost_ looked attractive. (If you squinted your eyes a bit and unfocused until you couldn’t see the weird way his one eye was made misshapen by his cheek.)

“Thank you! Thank you so much! Should we start now, or should I come back later?” This guy bounced back fast – he was already standing, giant hand shooting out to grab Baekhyun’s again like he was trying to pass his excitement into his master via osmosis (and when had he let go in the first place?).

“No time like the present,” Baekhyun lifted his chin in false confidence as his mother’s voice echoed his in his head. (Certainly, there was no time like the present when you didn’t own a watch.)

“So…how does this work? What’s first?”

“Well, firstly, you need to understand that there are no set steps to follow with witchcraft. It’s not a set map. It’s more like a cluster of ideas that get strung along,” Baekhyun said in his best know-it-all voice.

Chanyeol was taking this all in with wide eyes.

“Have you ever made anything weird happen? Something you couldn’t explain…something…magical?” (Baekhyun really hoped Chanyeol had never seen Harry Potter.)

Chanyeol’s eyebrows scrunched a little. His face twitched and he glanced back at Baekhyun’s expectant face. “My mixtape did catch on fire once.”

He burst into laughter at his own terrible joke as Baekhyun watched on in silence.

(Baekhyun had no idea what a mixtape was, nor what was funny about pyrokinetic powers. Those could be dangerous.)

Baekhyun said as much as he waited for Chanyeol to stop smacking his thigh in mirth.

Chanyeol was too busy wiping tears from his eyes to reply.

 

* * *

 

Eventually, once Chanyeol was finally able to calm down, they were able to get down to work. ‘Work’ was Baekhyun convincing Chanyeol that his first task was to sort inventory.

“Are you sure this is training my magic?” Chanyeol asked, voice strained as he heaved a crate atop the counter.

“All good things to those who work.” Baekhyun flipped blithely through a magazine and definitely did not take a peek at Chanyeol’s biceps. “Being around magic will make you better at sensing it. Most people feel _something_ when they walk through a magical barrier. _You_ came bowling through without a thought.”

Chanyeol rubbed the back of his neck and shot a grin at Baekhyun. “I thought this was a hobby shop or something.”

Baekhyun followed the line of his neck with his eyes. He must’ve stared too long, because Chanyeol continued, “I actually used to work at one of those. Every time we ordered in a new kind of model I got to build the display version. It was a pretty good gig, except that I kept knocking things over so they eventually had to fire me.”

Baekhyun was feeling a lot more apprehensive about letting Chanyeol waltz around the store now.

(It was a personal policy of his to never regret anything, though, so he was pretty quick to ignore the anxiety brewing in the pit of his stomach at the sight of Chanyeol wobbling another crate dangerously close to a jar of pre-made luck potion powder.)

(He did shift the jar a little closer to his side of the counter, though. Just to be safe.)

“So, what do you do normally, then? Other than walk into random hobby shops.” Baekhyun peered at Chanyeol, who was trying his best to avoid a bushel of herbs dangling from the ceiling at a height that Baekhyun begrudgingly admitted had never been a problem for him. “You’re in school, right?”

“Yeah, just finishing up some summer courses and then I’m completely done. After that…well. Who knows? What do magical people do to make money?”

“Some run shops like this. Some explore the world to practice magic or discover new forms of life. Some hunt beasts. Some teach. Some perform. Some build. There’s a lot out there,” Baekhyun explained. “The magical world runs on barter systems. So there’s no need to worry about your career.”

“Bartering? Like what?” Chanyeol’s big eyes were made bigger with wonder as he gazed at Baekhyun, arms slack atop the crate he’d just finished lifting.

“Memories, knowledge, desirable spells and potions…those sorts of things. You can use them to strengthen your own magic.” Baekhyun eyed the giant vein running up Chanyeol’s forearm as he continued to lift more boxes. “Anyways, the better you get at magic the better you’ll understand all that.”

Chanyeol nodded, his grin spreading across his whole face. “Thanks, Baekhyun. I really appreciate you helping me out.”

(As if Baekhyun was the one providing physical labour for free, not Chanyeol.)

(But he had to shove his face back in his magazine anyways so Chanyeol wouldn’t notice his blush.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think that Baekhyun is slowly just trying to trick Chanyeol into doing his work for him a la Tom Sawyer, which is what I would do if I owned a magic shop.

**Author's Note:**

> What is this. 
> 
> I like witches. I like magic shops. I like parentheses. I don't have a good track record with finishing fics. This fic will probably be half-plot half-slice-of-life chapters. Sorry in advance.


End file.
